LANSING — The woman did not identify herself, nor the daughter on whose behalf she spoke. She was the mother of Victim 170, and she came to Ingham County Court on Monday to get herself acquainted with the confines of the courtroom, where her daughter will deliver a victim impact statement on Tuesday.

She was not planning to talk, but then she saw the feeble, sickly looking man in the witness box and she decided otherwise.

When she confronted Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctor who abused her daughter and will be sentenced later this week on multiple counts of criminal sexual assault, she spoke to him directly.

Do you remember me? she asked.

Do you remember my daughter?

More than once, he nodded, and then his shoulders heaved and he cried, making barely audible noises. With a quivering voice and red splotches mottling her neck, she chastised him. She wanted him to cry. He deserved that. Her daughter was just 12 when she first became a patient of Nassar and in the wake of his terror, the now-high schooler cries plenty. Her daughter is in her third year of counseling, has suicidal thoughts and is struggling in school. This week, she has stayed up at night watching all of the victim statements online, tears streaming down her cheeks.

When Victim 170 addresses him on Tuesday, her mother warned, he better not avert his gaze:

“You damn well better look her in the eyes and apologize,” she said.

Just as the number of victim impact statements delivered in court continues to grow — as of Tuesday, 158 women are slated to speak in court— so has the number of survivors. There are now at least 186 women who have come forward about Nassar’s widespread sexual abuse, which he hid for years under the guise of bogus medical procedures (and for which one survivor said her family is still being billed). MSU Police Chief Jim Dunlap, who took a vacation day on Monday to sit in on proceedings and was moved to tears on multiple occasions (he has a 15-year-old granddaughter), told The Athletic that roughly two dozen alone came forward this past weekend.

But that number, which may grow still before Nassar is sentenced to 40 years in prison (as dictated by his plea agreement), does not begin to capture the true scope of those affected by his decades of abuse. There are so many more who have been ensnared by one man and his sinister acts. For every woman in court, there is a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a husband or boyfriend, a coach, or a mentor. And they are neither impervious to the pain nor immune to the guilt. Plenty share in the emotional turmoil that has taken root since Nassar’s deeds have come to light.

“It doesn't just affect these beautiful young women,” said the mother of Victim 170. ”It’s our family, our friends.”

For each survivor who has been stoic and solid in delivering their statement, there has been a loved one within arm’s length who, by comparison, seems an utter Rorschach test of emotion.

For Kassie Powell, it was her dad, Doug, a law enforcement officer whose face was red and raw with anger as he rattled off a litany of prison terms Nassar should become acquainted with for his next phase as an inmate. His remarks included expletives and colorful language, and he apologized in advance for not being politically correct.

For Larissa Boyce, it was her husband, Adam, a choir teacher, whose voice cracked when detailing the many physical ailments his wife had suffered since the scandal had become public — all manifestations of the extreme stress and trauma she lived with daily.

For Taylor Livingston, it was her coach, Kym Williams, who visibly shook as she struggled to contain her impulses when standing so close to the man who molested Taylor at the most vulnerable stage of her life. Livingston explained to the court, in a gripping statement, about how her terminally ill father had been in the room when Nassar assaulted her. He passed away in January 2017, never knowing what had happened. Livingston never could bring herself to tell him the truth.

And while Livingston spoke courageously of her father — her hero and best friend — her coach remained right behind her, seething with a smoldering rage toward Nassar, sitting just a few feet away.

“You see me shaking?” Williams asked The Athletic when recounting the experience. “I was raised in the South. What you saw was me not whipping his ass.”

Of the wide-ranging gamut of emotions, guilt has been a prevailing theme in court over the past week, and it is no wonder considering Nassar's indiscriminate manipulation. Whether it further fueled his depravity, or whether he felt so damn brazen that the paid it no mind, Nassar often molested young women with their parents present in the room. It is one of the most inexplicable and horrific elements of an already staggering crime. And with it comes one of the more insidious byproducts of his abuse: These children were not only robbed of their innocence; their parents were robbed of their ability to keep them safe.

Whitney Mergens, who spoke on Monday, said the hardest day of her life was on Friday, sitting though the dozens of victim impact statements. It was the first time in all of her 21 years she witnessed her father cry. He held her tight as they walked out the doorway and apologized that he failed to protect her.

Whitney Mergens, a track and field athlete at Oakland University, said telling her parents about the abuse were the hardest words to ever come out of her mouth. (Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal via USA TODAY NETWORK)

He wasn't the only one harboring these feelings.

“You made all of us unwilling accomplices in your sick attacks on our precious girls,” Trinea Gonczar’s mother, Dawn Homer, spat through shuddering sobs last week following a heart-wrenching testimony from her pregnant daughter, believed to be one of Nassar's first victims.

The commitment required to see this carriage of justice through has affected entire families. Jacob Denhollander, who has been steadfast at the side of his wife, Rachael, the first to publicly come forward about Nassar's abuse, recently took two weeks off of work to attend proceedings. Instead of going on vacation to someplace warm, he's sitting in a courtroom, listening to heart-wrenching testimony that has become all too familiar over the past year and a half.

Meanwhile, the Denhollanders' three young children are at home with Rachael's parents. This is time with their kids that the Denhollanders will never get back.

“What is so heinous about sexual assault is not just the act itself,” Denhollander said on Monday afternoon. “It's what it does to a person. It robs so much.”

After a recent break in court, Lindsey Lemke’s mother, Christy, and Jordyn Wieber’s mother, Rita, huddled together by the elevator banks before court reconvened. A food delivery guy arrived with an order and, holding a bag of sandwiches, he looked confused as to where to go.

The two asked what name was on the order, and they directed him to a different floor. Somehow, this is their new normal.

“It’s the worst nightmare you can go through, because you feel like you're the dumbest person for missing it,” Lemke said.

Her daughter Lindsey, a former MSU gymnastics team captain, has quickly become a folk hero around these parts for her fiery statements indicting not just Nassar, but the other adults and institutions that have failed so many of these women — MSU, USA Gymnastics, Twistars, among others.

She’s been so proud to see her daughter blossom into such a fierce surrogate for so many of her fellow survivors, and to hold others accountable. But it doesn’t erase the pain and second-guessing she has experienced at the thought of her daughter's abuse. Rita is haunted by the fact that while their girls were enduring such harrowing times, many parents simply did not know.

“You lay awake thinking about all the things you missed, all the red flags you didn't see,” Lemke said.

Wieber nodded and interjected:

“I wouldn't wish it on anybody.”

[Editor’s note: A majority of our work at The Athletic is behind a paywall. Here’s why. But we’ve decided that all of Katie Strang’s coverage of the Nassar trial should be free to the public. If this kind of journalism is important to you, the best way to support it is to subscribe at the bottom of this story. Thank you for reading.]

Katie Strang is the managing editor and a senior writer at The Athletic Detroit. She joined The Athletic after six years at ESPN.com, where she held a variety of roles, including senior editor and writer, covering the NHL and MLB. While reporting on the NHL, she was a regular on the Hockey Today podcast and a contributor to SportsCenter. Follow Katie on Twitter @KatieJStrang.